Searching for a new router

My RT-AC66U is starting to flake out on me.

I would like a new router with a little more range, as the far bed rooms sometimes has a signal issue (rarely noticed, I think it depends where the cars are parked).

For budget I would like to keep it under $250, under $150 would be preferred (I am willing to spend the money if needed).

We have lots of devices:
2 phones
chromecast
google home
4 computers
xbox
nest
kindle
printer
Plex server
Plus probably a few more I cant think of.

Reading the reviews, all the popular ones on the review sights seems to have lots of negative reviews on Amazon so I am not really sure what to think.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Best 5Ghz WiFi performance in the consumer space at the moment is with the R7800 due to its excellent Qualcomm QCA9984 WiFi chip and it has properly working MU-MIMO and HT160 unlike other Broadcom based devices from Netgear/Asus. Downsides are buggy attached devices section ie name change/icon change and priority settings. Excellent Open source support especially loved in the LEDE/OpenWRT community along side the Linksys WRT3200 and also pretty popular in DD-WRT as well. The R7800 is really great with OpenWRT and SQM QoS that's available with it is really great at balancing bandwidth between devices with excellent bufferbloat management. Voxel on snb forums does a great job providing modified stock firmware with performance tweaks and updated packages from OpenWRT/LEDE as stock R7800 firmware itself is OpenWRT based.

Best stock UI and advanced settings with decent WiFi performance and excellent VPN performance would be the Asus AC86U. Only downside is since its Broadcom based make sure to disable MU-MIMO as if you have 2 or more MU capable devices MU may be used and Broadcom's implementation of MU is terrible leading to an actual performance loss on Mu capable clients and Broadcom is not open source friendly but RMerlin provides excellent customized stock firmware, hes pretty active on snbforums and is also a mod there if you need help with that.

So I would choose from the Netgear R7800 or Asus AC86U as they are probably the best options at the moment.

The older Netgear R8500 and Asus AC88U, Asus RT5300 all use the older Broadcom Cortex A9 based CPU without any crypto acceleration so VPN speeds take a huge hit, not to mention these units run very hot and depending on climate may overheat. They are still pretty good units but the two I recommended are better than these both in WiFi and CPU performance (ie VPN, and any other CPU related tasks you may utilize)

 

Is using my current Asus router as an extender for the AC86U worth while? Does it have a good hand off protocol?

Otherwise I would lean more towards the Netgear.

 

The AC68U does have a repeater mode so it can wirelessly connect to your router and relay the signal to your client devices. You can use it with either the R7800 or AC86U it doesn't matter. The clients will switch by them selves based on signal strength by themselves if connection is too low on one or the other.

The R7800 supports 802.11K to facilitate better client switching from one AP to another but I don't know if the AC68U supports it.

 

I have a network connection to the furthest point of my house so they would be hardwired together. But if the new one is a little more powerful then I dont think it would be needed in the first place.

 

Check out routersecurity.org for some security considerations also. The guy writes the defensive computing blog over at computerworld.com

 

You are right.

 

I read a lot of negative reviews on the Internet but there's often very little explanation if any of the reviewers knowledge.Newegg and Amazon reviews are prime examples of this.My experience with the same products is often very positive.
The router is only one part in a multi part setup.
In the threads on this forum is a lot of valuable information about wireless components and successful setups as well as troubled ones.
I'm getting good results pairing a Killer 1550 with a Netgear R7800 on 5ghz band using channels 36 and 48.
Getting a relatively steady 1,733.30 Mbps theoretical data rate is not plug and play.It takes some settings tweaking and trial and error and equipment placement.
A 100 MB/s file transfer across devices on the home network are possible but surely not an every instance happening.If you have network attached storage and are looking for increased transfer speed then equipment choice is very critical.
Downloading from the Internet is mostly reliant on your Internet service,time of day source of download,interference,channel congestion and probably won't improve much if at all with a newer router.

 

As for negative reviews online for any product, I have two comments:
1. Most happy costumers won’t post or give a star rating as they won’t bother, but those with bad experiences will obviously be annoyed and will more likely leave a review skewing ratings to the lower side. If your car is working you just get on with your life not worrying about reviews etc but if it has issues and causes you inconvenience obviously you would make sure to voice your irritation.

2. Amazon’s review system is ****ty, as they clump multiple products in a series on the same page and even reviews are mixed up because of that confusing customers. For example if you wanted to buy a Netgear R7800 router, the purchase page has other models and reviews are aggregates for all the models.

I still pay attention to reviews but I read them taking the above two points into account. I also still pay a lot more attention to the negative ones just to look for any common issue patterns regarding a product.

 

I have been having more issues with the wifi turning off (reading online it seems to be related to overheating).

I installed the Merlin fireware and I will give that a go for a few days. If it continues I will probably get the AC-86U because I know how to navigate the software.

 

That could be the reason.

 

I used this one.
https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/

 

Note that Asus does have a hardware equivalent using the QCA9984 WiFi chipset and IPQ8065 CPU called the Asus BRT-AC828 that is essentially an R7800. Unfortunately the Asus model is sold as a Buisness unit (expensive) and lacks HT160 option in firmware and apparently the firmware is buggy.

The Synology RT2600AC and R7800 are the only options as far as working MU-MIMO and HT160 go as they have Qualcomm chipsets.

Any Broadcom router that mentions either of these functions will have a terrible implementation leading to performance loss.

With HT160 assuming you have a Intel 9260ac card in your laptop/desktop you can easily hit 900+ Mbps with two above mentioned units and ~600 Mbps peak at HT80 with 2 antenna clients like the 9260ac/8265ac/8260ac etc. It’s pretty nice if you do a lot of LAN transfers to a NAS or the likes.


If you need only really good VPN performance with decent WiFi performance and don’t think you need HT160 or MU-MIMO get the AC86U. But ensure you disable MU-MIMO as this is a Broadcom unit and will lead to performance loss with MU clients due to the bad implementation.

Edit: I missed where you said you will get the 86U, nice choice and I hope you enjoy it with RMerlin's firmware. Go to SNB Forums as RMerlin is a mod there and hes pretty helpful along with many RMerlin users in the Asus subsection if you need help or have issues.

 

My current router just flaked out again. Time to either go down to Best Buy this afternoon (if they price match) or get it off Amazon.

 

Certified Refurbished Netgear R7800 on Amazon is out of stock again but you can get on the wait list.

A NIB R7800 is $185.If you sign up/get approved for the Amazon Chase credit card you can get it for $145

As I stated a few times on this forum I bought a refurb R7800 over a year ago and have zero issues with it.

My system includes an ARRIS SB8200 cable modem,R7800 router,Killer 1550 Wireless-AC and a 1TB SSD attached to the router.

 

Good idea.

 

I just ordered the 86U.

It should arrive Monday. I think it was a long time coming. Thank you for the help.

 

Got the router and have it setup (once I figured out the Ethernet cable from my modem to me router was bad...)

I see the MIMO option under Wireless-Professional, Is this the one to be disabled?
I left gameboost off (not sure what it does and I dont really do online gaming)
I have ATT fiber and it does not like me messing with the DNS servers
My plex server seems to be cooperating which is nice

As far as changing settings goes this is what I have done:
Combine the 2.4 and 5GHz bands
Automatic reboot at night

Anything else you might suggest? (I am going to stick with the stock firmware for awhile till I feel comfortable with it)